How to Dress Formal
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David: This is David from Be Better Guys.com The Guys Guide to Getting a Life.
We’re talking about what to wear for an event for formal wear. Now
formal wear tends to flip out a lot of guys. You get an invitation in the
mail for a wedding, for cotillion, for a bar mitzvah and it says black tie
and a lot of guys go, “I don’t own a tux, I don’t know what to do, I don’t
know how I’m going to dress” so we’re going to talk about the basics of
what you need.
First of all was formal wear, there’s two types, there’s black tie and then
there’s white tie. White tie most guys are probably not going to go to
that’s a very, very special event invitation only. Black tie is more common
and there’s 2 types of tuxedos you can wear either a black one or a
midnight blue either one would be acceptable.
So let me bring in Brian and we’ll go through the specifics of how black
tie works.
Brian: Hi David.
David: How’s it going Brian?
Brian: Good thank you.
David: You look good buddy.
Brian: I do what I can with what I have.
David: Alright, so on our tuxedo here, Brian has a black what’s called a peak
lapel tuxedo and it is a single button. There’s a lot of different options
with a tuxedo, first talking about the color again, this one is a peak lapel
you see it has got a point here. You can have a notch lapel which is similar
to mine on my jacket or what’s called a shawl which is a style that goes
back to the 30’s and 40’s.
The other thing is the number of buttons can vary. Typically most tuxedos
are one button as Brian’s is here. Mine I’m actually wearing a three button
but mine is not a tuxedo, mine is actually part of a suit and we’ll talk about
that a little bit. The other thing t remember you will see sometimes the
academy awards or the Grammy’s guys showing up with tuxedos with five
button, six buttons don’t do that.
You want a shirt to go with it. Two types of shirts, you can do a flat front
shirt like Brian has got here, or you could do the Wedding Singer heavily
ruffled pleated shirt. Right now styles are going the flat front shirt is a
little bit more popular. It’s a little bit more common. Also two types of
collars you can use. Brian’s got what’s called a lay down collar and I have
the same on my shirt and there’s also more of a flip up wing collar which
is nice.
The tips of the collar fit behind the bowtie and they look good some
people think they look like major D so depends on the look you’re going
for. You got to have the bow tie, that’s part of what completes the look.
Did you tie that tie Brian? You tied that yourself my man. Learn to tie a
bow tie if you’re going to wear a tux. You can certainly do a clip on but if
you’re not going to wear a clip on regular tie you shouldn’t wear a clip on
bow tie.
We have instructions on Be Better Guys.com on how to tie a bow tie.
Additionally, to complete your look, you want to have studs for your shirt
not standard buttons but studs, a cummerbund which usually covers your
waist area because you don’t wear a belt with tuxedo pants and then the
shoes that go with it as well.
A couple of things to keep in mind about tuxedo pants, they don’t do
cuffs. Again, they don’t have a belt so some people wear suspenders to
hold them up and that’s fine, we didn’t have them today but you can
certainly wear those and the other thing is they have a nice set of line
don’t the side which looks beautiful and helps distinguish them as tuxedo
pants from regular black pants.
So if you don’t have a tuxedo and you’re not going to get one what do you
do? Like me you can ear a black suit to a formal event that is acceptable to
do. But if you’re going to do it you want to make sure that you’re going as
understated and as formal as possible so black suit, white shirt, dark tie in
this case it’s a black tie with some white stripes so very, very subtle keep
your shoes polished to the nines and you’ll look good, that’s all for formal
wear, next we’re going to talk about formal wear for a funeral.
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